Disclaimer: They're not mine, a pity, they'd have more fun.
Author's notes: I blame this on Brecht (currently doing the lighting for a production of the Caucasian chalk circle) and painkillers (fell off lighting rig doing said production and cracked 3 knuckles)
The sun had glinted idly on the water, she remembered that. It was odd in the permanent haze, the drone of summer that spread itself across the landscape like a woollen blanket that something so ordinary would catch and hold her attention but still, the water glinted with a random iridescense. She ran a hand through her hair and gently prodded the sleeping form at her side.
"Time to go." She murmured, her heart no more in moving than his was in even opening his eyes and acknowledging the reality of it.
"Warm" he grouched back like a child, burying his head further into her side, trying she knew to hide from the world.
"I'm sorry" she breathed in return, but remained insistent until eventually a sleepy head raised itself and looked into her eyes.
"Spoilsport." She smiled and nodded, watching with wry amusement as he made a vague attempt to smooth the creases out of cotton clothes, irreversibly impressed by too many hours of sleeping in this hot sun.
"You bring out the worst in me" she returned, levering herself to her feet and holding out a hand to him. By chivalry or stubbornness he refused it however and after a few minutes managed to pull himself out of the long grass, his shoulder popping like the seed pods underfoot. He looked at his watch for the first time in what felt like weeks and his eyebrows rose above his glasses in mild surprise.
"We only have…"
"Two hours, I know." Her eyes cast briefly to his face then back down to the floor, unsure whether he was happy or sad and not really wanting to know the answer. His response was a lazy arm that snaked its way around her shoulders and pulled her to him, a kiss falling featherlight in her hair.
"We made the most of it" Daniel smiled, his eyes glittering like the sunlight on the pool. She couldn't help but meet his eyes then and seeing the warmth there a smile played openly on her own lips.
"We certainly did." He gave a little snort of laughter and pulled her closer for a second as if to share the sensation with her.
"And they said academia would be dull." She grinned at that, they always had done.
"They said sexy academic was an oxymoron."
"We all make mistakes." Another kiss, another touch. She knew for a second how easy losing herself would be, the first time she had stood over a dizzying drop and been only too eager to throw herself in. The momentum was there and the hand that drifted from her shoulder to the small of her back was push enough. But they were cresting the hill and below them the city spread out in a comfortable confusion, shanty towns spreading like algal blooms at its edges, whilst the centre was a sweet jar of candystick buildings. And in her heart of hearts Sam already knew what would happen. There would be a taxi and a plane and another taxi and an empty apartment resentful of a week's neglect, plants wilting on the windowsill, probably unaware that she had ever left, she watered them so rarely.
And it would be empty in the cool of the autumn evening. And she would be alone. He would have his own apartment, waiting with less resentment and more a doleful acceptance of its master's frequent wanderings. She had a feeling she knew how it felt. Daniel who was all intensity and fire, Daniel who leapt from subject to subject like fire on a grassland. She had never known he could be so different here. Never even expected it, but the air was heavy with a pregnant pause here and it had only taken a day for him to slow, to walk in step with her rather than their usual competition to be trail blazer. When they had stopped playing catch-up joint steps became joint heartbeats. And now they stood on the wasteland at the edge of the city, trespassers in a contrast of chain link and couch grass.
"I suppose we better find a taxi to the airport." He sounded completely calm, which only meant, Sam knew now, that he was as reluctant as she was. She stopped at the edge of the fencing, turning back to the hill and the lake beyond. She wanted to grab his hand and run back, but the place was not made for running. In the final glints of sunlight she could make out the forests in the far distance, the land that crossed between plantation and wilderness, where they had seen the elephants roam. Where Daniel had held her arm in perfect silence as they watched them pass. Where a touch had become and understanding had become a truth. There was the bay beyond that, they both knew, where more sunlight had glinted off the expanse of ocean on another twilight eve two nights ago, when time had not been their enemy and the atmosphere their release, not the seconds counting down until they could leave leaving no longer. He gently tugged on her hand, entwining her fingers with his like the links in the chicken wire, leading her through to find the bustle of the city that was so reminiscent and so deeply different to home. She had a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach, deep acceptance that gnawed like acid, that by the time they were back in the airport they'd be playing the game again. Travel was in its nature transitory and the escape even more of an illusion, she knew that and sadly, she knew he did too. He didn't lie to her, had never even in the darkness of the night when the stars had glinted like the sentinels the child within her wanted them to still be, he wouldn't lie to her and let them both think this could continue forever. It was part of the idle haze of this summer, this place, this mixture of old magic and old instinct, bound into new feelings she didn't want the mind she lived in at home to process, in case it sullied the perfection of them. She didn't want to bring it here or ruin this place by taking it with her.
So instead she stood in her own living room, watching the light from the lamp reflect on the still surface of the fishbowl. Bags still in the hallway, the energy of even removing the tags, unpacking the bags and accepting the fate of her return as yet too much for her. Rain drummed on the window pain, as if even the weather was trying to assert a contrast, make sure she knew where she was. She had been right, she was alone.
There had been no taxi from the airport; instead their friends had been there, with exclamations of joy on their return and a million questions she didn't yet have answers too. She couldn't describe the trip to them and neither could Daniel, it felt almost sacrilegious to attempt to define it. So instead they had remained quiet, blaming their reticence on a jet lag they didn't have. Smiling in suitably tired ways until they had silently begged their way into being allowed to part company, to go home. But without their five moments at the airport alone, there had been no finality. Sam could feel it even now, the way the ending hung over her, the atmosphere not quite dispelled, not quite concreted. Yet, she was alone.
The tap at the door was soft and questioning, it seemed to her the first soft sound she had heard since her return. She padded towards it, trying not to fall over her own bags in he semi darkness. She opened the door with a half sigh, already preparing to give the impression of the exhaustion she felt. But it was him standing there. Hair tousled and damp, clothes changed, but not back to the role he usually took in their real lives, a halfway house, the cotton smock he had adopted still clinging to him in a semi-transparent worship. She stood aside to let him in and he walked with a practised ease around her suitcases, too used to dealing with his own. He stood in the middle of the room, uncertain, waiting on her turf she realized, for her direction. But her mind refused to co-operate, so instead she merely looked up, with an expression even she could not decipher.
"Did you expect me not to come?" He asked, looking at her oddly. She shook her head; she hadn't expected him not to, anymore than she had expected him to be here. Involuntarily she walked towards him, her eyes still fixed somewhere in the middle of his chest, almost seeing the beating. His hand reached up and brushed through her hair, the gesture a call to her memory. She smiled faintly and leaned into his touch, leaned into him until they were millimetres apart and he closed the gap, making the decision. She smiled against him, a wry reaction to her own blindness and to the movement, which disturbed the waters of the fishbowl and caused the light to glisten on it.
The magic was not so idle after all. And in the distance, she could have sworn she heard an elephant call.